Authors

Discussion

By tracing the influence and reception of East German sexology from the 1960s to the 1980s on the international stage, this paper argues for a transnational perspective on how medical professionals approached and understood questions of gender, sex, and sexuality under socialism. Although there were exceptions (Romania is a notable example), sexologists within eastern Europe spoke with one another, read one another’s research, and developed theories about what constitutes healthy sex, appropriate gender roles, or acceptable forms of sexuality within a socialist society. Connections between East German and Cuban sexologists expand the scope of this transnational perspective beyond the regional boundary of eastern Europe.

Within the scope of the panel, this paper focuses on instances when individual East German sexologists moved from the national to the international and garnered prominence elsewhere within the state socialist world. Particular attention is paid to the case of Siegfried Schnabl, an East German whose writings on gender, sexuality, and health spread via translations into (among other languages) Bulgarian, Russian, Slovak, and Spanish. Schnabl’s work with professionals outside of the GDR is also noteworthy, such as his conference discussions on the continued criminalisation of male-male homosexual acts in the Soviet Union, or his collaboration with Monika Krause—a fellow East German sexologist—in the development of sexual health clinics in Cuba.